Posts Tagged "tao-of-dnd" from 2021

"Ten degrees of latitude equals about 690 miles. If we decide what the central latitude on our map is, and then what we'd like both the most northern and the most southern parts to feel like, we can get a scale on our map.

... This makes our map about 1400 miles from bottom to top ... and no matter where we stick a pin, we can measure in degrees from the bottom to the top, look up a place on earth that corresponds to that latitude and ..."

Aha! AHA!

Merry Christmas, Alexis. I trust your grandson (Julian?) enjoyed his first celebration.

A year ago it was nearly impossible to type. My hand issue still almost totally a mystery -- and I'm far from recovered -- but slowly regaining range of motion. The only gift I need!

By the way. One more comment I've been meaning to make.
I've become an obsessive poetry fan and occasional poet over the last threeish years. Browning and Hopkins are my favorites.

There's a portion in Browning's Cleon that reminds me of you every time I revisit it.

Thou, in the daily building of thy tower,—
Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil,
Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth,
Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim
Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect,—
Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake—
Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope
Of some eventual rest a-top of it,
Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed,
Thou first of men might'st look out to the East:
The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the sun.

My favorite detail in the menu is that items such as absinthe deviate from a standard 'equipment list' style description. Or the "fried eggs" - a simple item conceptually but they're not just "cooked in oil/fat", they're "stolen fresh from our hens..." The hot spice entry is another good example.

The feeling as I read was of a restaurantkeeper, proud of his hard-earned literacy, pouring every word he knew into the descriptions, and occasionally getting carried away with himself. [your achievement of the effect was controlled, of course.]

I noticed a typo BTW. Under Sideboard - Brown gravy: "an layer of sauce".

Alexis, I just pickedup my menu from the old house. Unboxed it and ... it's gorgeous! Wow!

Now I have to decide whether to put the Piglet, as a specific location, in the "Fallow-like" starting zone of my campaign beginning in the new year ... ... or use the menu items piecemeal. Thinking the latter - use the taproom items for a tavern, use the finer dining items for a restaurant frequented by merchants and those with governmental positions or flourishing businesses...

Alexis, put the menu up on the sidebar of the blog with the rest of your books!

Oh great, I'll be moving house probably before the menu gets to me. I'll ask the old roommates to look out for the package :)

I can't imagine I am the first to notice this, but there's some kind of typo visible on the preview screen for the video link on the kick starter. That is to say, the splash image that we see before clickin play.

The entry for "hopped ale" under TAP ends with "served in a one-pint short stein one pint".

Congratulations! It’s really happening :-)

"3) Instead of using computers to simulate DMs, so that users can play, create simulations of players, so that users can DM."

As of Monday I officially have become a graduate student - and my research will, in some fashion, center around new ways of adding the computer to RPGs. (I think the techniques I use for doing will be generalizable to other kinds of real-time, high intensity knowledge work.) One of my goals is to be able to create"practice environments" for DM's and for players, so that they can Master the game rules away from the table... Using the same code-based environment that (eventually) will power my game itself.

(prices in my previous comments were approximate, and I forgot about the coasters. but I think my point stands regardless of specific prices.)

If I recall correctly the C$100 price is for yours faithful supporters to deliberately spend extra money in order to help get the menu made at all, but after launch the price will be more like C$50.

It's a little confusing that you don't have a C$50 option which just represents paying regular price for the menu, like a typical preorder. That way anyone who wants to purchase, but doesn't want to have to remember several months later that it's now available, can put down their cash now.

(Presumably one benefit of backing the C$100 tier instead of a hypothetical C$50 tier is that orders at C$100 would be filled first.)

Wow, you are up to more than 1/3rd of the desired funding goal. Not bad for the first day! Congrats, Alexis.

I shared the kickstarter with friends and will try to broadcast to more.

May the dollars mount up once the kickstarter appears!

Dig it. Thanks.

In the spirit of trying to help shake your doldrums by giving you something to write about:

I've just seen your wiki page for the Puissance ability Precise Hit:

https://wiki.alexissmolensk.com/index.php/Precise_Hit_(sage_ability).

Is the intention that a fighter with this ability will be able to use it on every attack they make? At first blush that seems reasonable for an Authority ability: a mid/high-level fighter chipping away at enemy's resources, weakening them by breaking weapons and degrading armor so that they are softer or less-capable targets for the other characters (esp. those with smaller attack bonuses and Strength scores.)

What is it exactly people feel they are getting out of an abundance of images in a splat book? I feel that obsession with the visual is similar to how the most successful social network material is images with a bit of easy text on them. Or why big whizbang spectacle movies with zero substance can continue to draw crowds.

There's nothing wrong with appreciating Visual art, of course. But it is a very limited medium for conveying any kind of Game world information. Anything visual which does convey such information, would probably more properly be called data visualization. Maps, for instance. Or a well arranged table.

The "splat book" would, with those characteristics and at that price point, perhaps better be called a textbook. (that's a compliment.)

It really is amazing how much rehash garbage comes out of the company... Well, not amazing. Disappointing, that so many people have such shallow games , or such goldfish like imagination, that they honestly are getting anything out of the typical splat book.

As usual, please excuse my voice typos. (I continue to include this disclaimer not for your sake, Alexis, but for those who don't read the comment section as often).

I hope I've presold extra copies of this by getting friends to drool over it. What is the status of the menu project at this time?

This one got me to laugh out loud. From a combination of the exaggerated eyebrow, and the second line of text not Fully registering with me until I had to go down far enough for the picture to smack me in the face.

I remember enjoying your comics a few years ago, but mostly as an interesting experiment and a showcase of the art you had created for your game. I don’t remember myself laughing at them very much. (I probably would’ve liked them more if You had been writing a continuous, noncomedy narrative, rather than disconnected strips as in a newspaper comic.)

until this third image macro , I didn’t suspect that you were making these, rather than finding them.

I’m not not sure what to make of this latest post type, but I think if you keep going you’re liable to hit on something.

Please excuse typos as I use my voice to write.

I have been doing self play to practice combat as you have recommended a few times in the past. The exercise is very effective. At pulling me out of the torpor of not having run games in a couple years.

What I have been wondering is what techniques might be useful for practicing other parts of the game where the rules are not sort of a an environment unto them selves as combat is. Any thoughts?

I can confirm that my eyes are popping.

I’ll take one.

Great work, Alexis. On my initial reading it seems you've finally brought together a rule set that places travel at the dead center of the gameplay loop. Set off in a direction; get stymied and change course; make good time, then bad; attend to your selves, followers, and belongings; sleep, wake, preparations, set out again ... choosing how fast to move and which direction to go, in an unfamiliar region with what may be an unreliable map ...

Last night after reading the Travel page, I watched Stagecoach (for the first time.) Your page was an appropriate appetizer given the movie's premise of travel under dangerous circumstances. Especially the scene where they ford the river, with the horses up to the tops of their necks in water.

"A considerable number of human persons are simply not capable of seeing the intrinsic benefits of a game that, like art, reflects life ... because so many humans are incapable of life."

Christ, when you put it like that... I can't but agree.

At the cost of a player moving from 23 years old to 24, the players could more easily protect themselves from misunderstandings with the law, gain considerable status by supporting and aiding a community
see age as a resource to be exploited in the same way as a pile of food, personal skills or wealth, as something spent in order to obtain those things mentioned upper in this post, there might be reason to see the accumulation of years over real-time spent to mean something,

Oh lord. Best wishes, Alexis. I hope the test readout is a false alarm.

Griffin,

Alexis has produced two such "how to do it" / "behind the scenes" modules on a blog for paid subscribers, Authentic Adventures. AFAIK that project is now on hold but I encourage you to pay Alexis's Patreon, even if only for a single month to check those out.

I will see if some Chinese language sources yield good videos. Not holding my breath though; Chinese video production tends to be execrably saccharine.

Sad that I can no longer type well enough to request a second shot at being your player. I have much more time these days than I did in 2016.

When the poster is availble, I will buy at least two copies, one for me and one for friend, and will point all my RPG loving friends at it. Even if they don't play what you or I would even consider a game at all, customers are customers. And maybe it will inspire some of them to deeper games.

I am a movie ignoramus but slowly chipping away at the ignorance. Maybe I will manage a statue.

Have not seen most of the ones you show here but can dig the format. (I will set some of them to download.) I feel I could almost run a whole evening on the back of the flute player.